Art Hostage

Art Hostage Services
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The Art Hostage team undertakes a wide range of services, including due diligence, collection conservation and management, risk assessment and security as well as legal issues, recovery and dispute resolution involving art and artifacts. Through partnerships with leading organizations, the Art Hostage team can provide a complete service for all aspects of collecting and protecting art.

Thursday, August 24, 2017

Paintings Recovery Back-story:

One of them,
Dick Ellis, told The Mail on Sunday: ‘What was very apparent to me was
that the robbers had a very good understanding of the layout of the
property and good knowledge of the Bulmers themselves. It was very well
planned and orchestrated.’

He said his first move was to place an advert in the Antiques Trade Gazette, offering a £50,000 reward for information.

In
June this year, 2015, Mr Ellis received a phone call from Mr Hill to say that
‘he had been contacted and told that someone he knew, knew somebody
else, who knew somebody else who had information’. What followed was a
period of tense negotiation. Mr Ellis said: ‘It is not an easy process.
But you can be assured that the money went to those whose information
led to the recovery, not the raiders themselves.’

Before
the money was wire-transferred, Mr Ellis had to authenticate the
pictures at a secret location and the Bulmers were finally given the
good news two weeks ago.

The suspects face charges relating to a £2.5 million robbery of art
and silver at the stately home belonging to Susie and Esmond Bulmer.

Twleve men were due to appear but a European arrest warrant was issued for one defendant, John Morris, 55.

He booked a one-way ticket out of UK after being charged last month, Bristol Magistrates’ Court was told.

The eleven defendants appeared at court and denied involvement in the raid, in Bruton, Somerset, eight years ago.

They also deny having anything to do with valuable stolen goods as recently as 2015.

Facing a charge of conspiracy to rob, Liam Judge, 41, and Matthew
Evans, 40, both of Tuffley, Gloucester, denied the accusations.

They were released on unconditional bail, along with co-defendant
Thomas Lynch, 42, of Birmingham, who was accused of assisting in the
realisation of stolen property.

Also accused of conspiracy to rob was Skinder Ali, 38. He denied the
charge, along with another of assisting in the realisation of stolen
property, relating to 19 paintings.

Mark Regan, 45, denied the same charge of assisting in the realisation of criminal property.

David Price, 52, of London, and Donald Maliska, 63, of Dartford, Kent,
both denied conspiring to defraud an insurance company and assisting in
the realisation of 19 stolen paintings.

Ike Obiamwe, 55, of Sutton, denied the same allegations.

Jonathan Rees, 62, of Weybridge, Surrey, denied perverting the course
of justice by giving a false statement to police during an interview on
November 25, 2015.

He also denied assisting in the realisation of stolen property, and conspiracy to defraud.

The defendants appeared before District Judge Lynne Matthews at Bristol Magistrates’ Court.

A European arrest warrant for Morris was applied for by prosecutor Ben
Samples, who said: "A postal-requisition was sent on July 19.

"Police tell me he bought a one-way ticket out of the country on July 19 and left the country. We believe he is in Europe."

All were sent for trial at Bristol Crown Court and their next court appearance will be September 22.

Liam Judge and Matthew Evans are accused of conspiracy to commit robbery and, like all the defendants, are pleading not guilty

Ike
Obianiwe is accused of conspiracy to receive stolen goods and conspiracy
to defraud; Azhar Mir of controlling criminal property; and Jonathan
Rees of conspiracy to receive stolen goods, conspiracy to defraud and
committing a series of acts intending to pervert the course of justice

Donald Maliska and David Price are accused of conspiracy to receive stolen goods and conspiracy to defraud

Bulmers cider family art robbery: Eleven men in court

Eleven men have
appeared in court charged in connection with a multi-million pound raid
at a cider-making family's luxury home in Somerset.

Esmond and Susie Bulmer's home in Bruton was targeted in 2009 and the couple's housekeeper was allegedly tied to a banister.
A total of 15 paintings worth £1.7m, and £1m of jewellery were stolen.
All the defendants deny any wrongdoing and are due to appear at Bristol Crown Court on 22 September.
Those charged are:

At Bristol Magistrates' Court, all 11 indicated through their lawyers that they would be pleading not guilty to the charges.
A
12th defendant, John Morris, 56, of Cowper Gardens, Enfield, London,
did not attend court and a warrant for his arrest without bail was
issued by the judge. He is accused of conspiracy to receive stolen
goods.

A Green Light for Art Criminals?

LONDON — The horrific Grenfell Tower fire, which claimed the lives of about 80 residents of an apartment block here in June, has had a number of unforeseen consequences.

Among
them is the Metropolitan Police’s decision to temporarily transfer the
three officers in its art and antiques unit to the team investigating
the blaze. The redeployment of Detective Constables Sophie Hayes, Ray
Swan and Philip Clare, first reported last month in The Art Newspaper,
leaves London, the world’s second-largest market for art and antiques,
after New York, unsupervised by any specialist police officers — for the
moment, at least. In 2016, the British market, dominated by London’s
auction houses and dealers, was estimated to be worth $12 billion in
sales, according to a report compiled by Art Basel and UBS.

“It’s
the wheel turning full circle,” said Richard Ellis, a former officer at
the Met, as the police force is known, who founded the unit in 1989.
His art and antiques squad of then-four permanent detectives revived a
section that had been disbanded in 1984.

“It
seems hugely irresponsible to close the unit at a time when terrorist
activity is being funded at least to some extent by the illegal trade in
antiquities,” he added. “We’re at a completely opposite pole from
America.”

Mr. Ellis contrasted the Met’s three reassigned art crime detectives with the 16 special agents in the F.B.I.’s Art Crime Team.
A further 6,000 special agents are deployed by U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, to protect cultural property from
trafficking.

ICE contends
that the Islamic State militant group has established “systematic
procedures” in Iraq and Syria to “extort illegal excavation operations
to generate revenue.” This illegal traffic has therefore become a
hot-button issue for the Department of Homeland Security in Washington
and for international bodies such as Unesco. But reputable antiquities
dealers, while wary of handling looted works, remain sanguine.

“In
2011, we asked our members to report if they were offered anything
suspicious,” said Vincent Geerling, a trader in Amsterdam who is
chairman of the International Association of Dealers in Ancient Art.
Seven of its 32 members are based in London. “To our astonishment, it
just hasn’t happened,” said Mr. Geerling, who cited just two examples of
suspicious items being offered to the association’s members.

But according to Édouard Planche of Unesco’s secretariat, looters are simply playing a waiting game.

“You
don’t see the most valuable illegal pieces on the open market,” Mr.
Planche said. “But we’ve seen the extent of the illegal excavations.
Where does this stuff go? It either goes into private collections or is
put in storage. Sooner or later, it will appear on the market, maybe in
20 years’ time.”

The United Nations Security Council announced in February 2015 a ban on all trade in looted antiquities from Iraq and Syria. The moratorium appears to have been effective, at least in the experience of London’s police force.

“The
Met’s Art and Antiques Unit have had no referrals to support the claim
that the London art market is experiencing an upsurge in artifacts
emanating from conflict zones in Syria and Iraq,” said Asim Bashir, a
Met communications officer, in an email. He said the Met was currently
dealing with “a very small number” of investigations relating to
illicitly excavated antiquities from those regions.

“Information gathered shows that the items left the source countries a number of years ago,” he added.

Martin
Finkelnberg, head of the Art and Antiques Crime Unit of the Dutch
police, said he had seen “no evidence” of antiquities being sold to fund
terrorism. And he sympathized with the Met’s decision to reassign its
art and antiques specialists. “When something major happens, it has to
be all hands on deck,” he said. “Police forces only have so many
officers.”

Originally
founded in 1969, the Metropolitan Police’s art and antiques unit has
accumulated specialist expertise in a range of art-related crimes
including theft, forgery and fraud. Its London Stolen Arts Database
contains details and images of 54,000 items. .

The
Met declined to provide overall statistics about the unit’s recent
investigations or prosecutions, and just one art-related prosecution
features in the Met’s searchable news releases. In June, Nadeem Malick
was sentenced to 18 months in prison for dealing in stolen watches.

Mr.
Ellis, the former leader of the Met’s art and antiques squad, said that
in the 1980s and ’90s, police resources were further stretched by
fakes. Investigating master forgers such as John Myatt and Shaun Greenhalgh required the unit to take on five extra officers, according to Mr. Ellis.

“There’s
less good faking now,” said Mr. Greenhalgh, who in 2007 was sentenced
to four years and eight months in prison after making and selling
forgeries of historic artworks. These included an “ancient Egyptian”
alabaster statue of a princess that was bought in 2003 by the Bolton
Museum in northern England in 2003 for 440,000 pounds, or about $700,000
at the time.

“It’s
far more difficult to do with the science being what it is,” said Mr.
Greenhalgh, 57. “Painting fake old masters is just not possible now. But
any confident art student can do 20th century.”

Mr.
Greenhalgh’s privately printed autobiography, “A Forger’s Tale,” was
reissued by a mainstream publisher in June and has so far sold 5,000
copies in hardback. In the book, he controversially claims to have
forged “La Bella Principessa,” a drawing, purportedly by Leonardo da
Vinci, that has been valued at as much as $150 million.

The
former faker described the Met’s specialist art and antiques detectives
as an “occupational hazard” when he was active. He said he thinks that
genuine artifacts, rather than forgeries, now present a bigger challenge
to the police.

“Plundering
antiquities in the Middle East and South America and legitimizing them
with false provenances, that’s the major problem in the art world
today,” Mr. Greenhalgh said.

Janet
Ulph, a professor of commercial law at the University of Leicester in
England, takes a similar view. “Cultural property is a specialist area,”
she said. “You do need police experts who understand all the different
laws relating to the illicit trade.”

She
said she is concerned that Britain might be unable to fulfill its
obligations to international agreements, such as a recent United Nations
resolution which urges governments to take effective measures against
trafficking in cultural property. “The absence of the unit cuts away at
the U.K.’s response,” Professor Ulph said.

It
might be too much to say that the scaling back of the Met’s art and
antiques unit is a green light to criminals. But right now, there is no
officer on the art beat keeping an eye on the traffic.

The Art World Calls This Man When Masterpieces Go Missing

Did you just discover your priceless family heirloom is about to be
sold at auction? Has your church’s centuries-old relic gone missing?
Christopher Marinello has got you covered.
Marinello has been dubbed the “Sherlock Holmes of Nazi-looted art,”
and with good reason. A lawyer who cut his teeth as a litigator in New
York, he is best known for founding Art Recovery International in 2013, a
private company that negotiates title disputes over stolen and lost
art. Art Recovery has helped negotiate some of the most high profile
restitution cases in recent years, such as the discovery and return of Matisse’s 1921 painting Seated Woman/Woman Sitting in Armchair, a
Nazi-looted masterpiece discovered in a trove of art inside German
collector Cornelius Gurlitt’s Munich apartment in 2012. In 2015,
Marinello helped negotiate the painting’s return to its rightful owners:
the descendants of famed modern art dealer, Paul Rosenberg. That same
year, the company also helped recover and return a sculpture by Auguste
Rodin which had been stolen and missing for 24 years.
And most recently, he oversaw the return of The Mark Provincial Sword
of Kent, a stolen Masonic sword that popped up at an auction house in
London.
We spoke with the stolen art expert about founding Art Recovery
International, why due diligence is an important (and unavoidable) step
for everyone in the art world and what he loves most about his job.

How did you begin working in art law?A very long
time ago I was an artist and not a very good one. My art teacher
encouraged me to become a lawyer as an alternative profession. But it
was also something that I had always wanted to do. So, I became a
lawyer, and I was a litigator in New York City for 20 years and
developed an art practice as well. In this way, I was able to mix my
love of art and the law. My very first case was representing an art
gallery on the ground floor of 70 Pine Street.What types of cases do you most like to take on? The company
you founded, Art Recovery, does a lot of work in the cultural heritage
sector and resolving claims of stolen art.We’ve been very
successful in some of the restitution cases we’ve handled, and we
represent a large number of insurance companies. Given the success we’ve
had, it’s put us in a good position where we can do pro bono work for
churches, museums and artists. We do a great number of pro bono cases,
so we’re able to pick and choose what we want to work on, and we’re
fortunate that we can do that. I’m a sucker for a charity, a church,
religious institution or an artist’s studio that has suffered a theft. I
know that funds are hard to come by, and I don’t mind taking on that
challenge to help them get their property back.Tell us about a recent case that you found particularly challenging, and one that exemplifies what Art Recovery does well.I
would say it was the Gurlitt case—that case had everything. Our
specialty is avoiding litigation and coming up with creative methods to
resolve title disputes over found art. We think that there are so many
lawyers out there who work in art law that love to pull the trigger on
litigation, but we don’t believe that litigation is in the best interest
of our clients. Many people who come to me either don’t want the
publicity that comes with a court proceeding…or they are afraid that the
object or the painting that they’re litigating over will be burned in
the marketplace because of the litigation—which often happens. They
don’t want it to affect other deals and relationships, and they want to
protect their anonymity. Not to mention, the frightening cost of
litigating a case today, and the time it consumes. We try to develop
creative methods to resolve cases, and that we consider a specialty.

Marinello with The Mark Provincial Sword of Kent. Art Recovery International

Can you expand a little on those creative methods?I
don’t want to give away any secrets, but for example: in the Gurlitt
case, we had the German authorities insisting that we follow the German
process. When they told us that the Gurlitt family had filed a claim in
the probate court, we went to the Gurlitt family directly and reached an
agreement with them: if they were successful in challenging Gurlitt’s
will, they would return the Rosenberg Matisse to the family. We made
that same agreement with the Kunstmuseum in Bern. We essentially were
going to receive the painting no matter which side won. We said to the
German authorities, ‘You can’t expect us to wait seven years for the
probate court to make a ruling…Because if the Gurlitt family wins we get
the painting back and if the Kunstmuseum Bern wins we get the painting
back—so give us the painting now!’ And that was something they were not
prepared for and was quite surprising. That’s sort of an example of the
things that we do. We try to think outside the normal processes.What are some timely issues you’ve encountered in recent
cases through Art Recovery? And are there areas where you feel the
process for handling cases related to the illegal trade of antiquities
can be improved?With respect to antiquities, I think the
obvious answer is not to buy anything that doesn’t have a complete
provenance. And that seems to be the problem and the message that needs
to be put across. It’s shocking that Hobby Lobby didn’t get that
message, nor did they listen to the advisors that they hired to help
them with that acquisition. What we see here is people buying things
without doing any kind of due diligence, and when they do due diligence,
they’re not listening to their advisors. So, obviously, it’s a problem.
The FBI tried to scare everybody by saying if you buy an unprovenanced
antiquity and it came from Syria, you could be charged with aiding
international terrorism. That’s enough to scare anybody with any sense.
But apparently not enough people have heard this and they continue to
buy unprovenanced objects. At the same time, I don’t side with the
academics that believe every object of antiquity should not be traded in
the marketplace. That’s completely absurd. There are fragments or Roman
glass you can buy for $20; they have no contextual importance, no
historical importance and no museum of collector really wants them. But
to ban their sale is extremist. Just as it’s extremist to think there
should be no regulation in the antiquities market. There needs to be a
middle ground like anything else.What about on the side of Nazi-looted art?With
Nazi-looted art, it’s a totally different position. I feel that people
are hiding Nazi looted works of art, hoping that the victims or the
claimants will go away, that they will lose interest, or lose their
records, that the claim itself will change or that the law will
change—and that’s wrong. I can tell you many cases—I know of looted
works of art in Mexico, Austria, Switzerland, Germany and in America.
People know they are in possession of Nazi-looted art but they’re hiding
them.

Auguste Rodin’s Young Girl With Serpent. Art Recovery International

Do you make spreading the word about due diligence a personal mission in your work?Every
time I recover something there’s always a message. [With] the sword
case, the auction house in London, if they had done a simple Google
search: “stolen Masonic sword”…Up pops an ad that another group of
Masons put out for this particular sword, saying it was stolen….
Every case I have has a message to the trade, or to the collector, to
the auction houses, that they need to do something. It’s not just that
I’m hard on the trade, I’m hard on collectors as well. Theft victims
need to report their thefts; you can’t expect an auction house or an art
gallery to do due diligence if you’re not reporting your thefts. They
need to report things to a central database like Artive, which doesn’t
charge anybody to report a theft…If your sword was stolen, you need to
report it to Artive so that an auction house can check it and make sure
they’re not selling something they shouldn’t be selling. It works both
ways, it’s a message for everybody.What is it that you enjoy most about what you do?I
thoroughly enjoy the negotiating process. I love the give and take, and
developing a strategy so that both parties will come to the table and
work out an agreement. When that happens I take great pride in knowing
that I avoided a major court case, which I know none of the parties
really want. But the best part of my job is in that photograph that you
saw with the sword, or in the Saint Olave’s church case,
where I’m able to return an object to a church, museum, theft victim or
charity; I get to talk to them about the object, and they tell me how
important it is to their family, their organization or to their church,
and what it means to have these objects back. That’s the best part of
the job.

Meet 'Good Samaritans' who got stolen de Kooning painting back to UA

A painting worth millions, stolen in a brazen, movie-style heist has resurfaced after being missing for 31 years.
The iconic stolen painting worth as much as $160 million. In 1985,
Willem de Kooning’s “Woman-ochre” disappeared from the University of
Arizona’s Museum of Art.
Police believe a couple walked in and cut the iconic painting from
its frame. It remained missing for more than 31 years. Then, in August, a
man called the museum saying he’d found the painting at an estate sale.
Museum officials confirmed its authenticity and brought the piece
back to UA, where, after some restoration, it will finally find its home
once again.

University of Arizona officials hailed
as heroes and Good Samaritans the three owners of an antiques store who
returned a $100 million painting after it was stolen from the school 31
years ago.

But David Van Auker, who alerted authorities, was having none of that. He said he’s humble, he’s thrilled, but he’s not a hero.

“We returned something that was stolen, and that’s something everyone should do,” he said. “It absolutely had to come back.”

Van
Auker, Buck Burns and Rick Johnson own Manzanita Ridge Furniture &
Antiques, a store they’ve operated for about 15 years in Silver City,
New Mexico.

The
oil painting was none other than “Woman-Ochre,” a Willem de Kooning
masterpiece that was looted in a daring heist in 1985 from the
University of Arizona Museum of Art in Tucson.

Since the UA announced the painting's recovery last
week, university associates who remember the devastating theft
firsthand, such as UA Police Chief Brian Seastone, have been smiling
nonstop.

“Somebody saw something, they said
something, and today she’s home,” said Seastone, who was a young officer
assigned to the case three decades ago.

'Wow, what a horrible frame'

Facing
a room full of local and national media on Monday, Van Auker recounted
the tense days that led up to the valuable artwork being returned.

Van
Auker took an immediate liking to the painting when he spotted it in
early August in an estate sale of a ranch-style home about 30 miles
outside Silver City. He, Burns and Johnson inspected the contents of the
home and decided to buy the lot, which included furniture and African
art objects.

Van Auker opened the master bedroom and was struck by an abstract painting of a nude woman just behind the door.

He called Burns in to take a look.

Burns
liked the colors and the rich, thick paint strokes. He did not like the
cheap, gold frame that encased the painting, however.

“My first thought was, ‘Wow, what a horrible frame,' ” Burns said.

But frames can be changed.

So they decided to take the painting home.

They
loaded the painting into a truck on top of some mid-century modern
furniture. Back at the store, they took the painting out and propped it
against a coffee table. They intended to hang it in their guesthouse.

'Is that a de Kooning?'

The next day, about 15 minutes after opening, a man
who had just moved to the community saw the painting and asked, “Is that
a de Kooning?”

Two more visitors had similar inquiries.

Burns got nervous; he took the painting and hid it in the store’s bathroom.

Van
Auker went online and discovered a 2015 article on azcentral.com about
the de Kooning painting that had been stolen from the UA museum without a
trace.

The photo online matched the painting he had in the store. He said he got a sinking feeling. He wasn’t sure what to do.

Realizing
he probably “sounded like a crazy person,” he called the UA art museum,
The Republic reporter who had written the 2015 story and the FBI.

He
sent photos and measurements to Olivia Miller, the museum’s curator,
and with each photo that arrived, she became more and more excited.

Van Auker took the painting home that night and hid it behind the sofa.

'We are so grateful'

The next day, Friday, Aug. 4, the museum curator and a group of museum staff made the 200-mile drive from Tucson to Silver City.

Once they saw the painting in person, there was no doubt.

By
the following Monday, Aug. 7, the painting was back at the university.
By Wednesday, Aug. 9, a university conservationist said preliminary
authentication showed it was “Woman-Ochre.”

On
Monday, Aug. 14, the antiques store owners made a trip to the art museum
at the university’s invitation for a special ceremony to thank them,
and the university unveiled the oil painting to the media.

“I’m so glad she’s back home,” whispered Johnson, before the ceremony began.

UA officials won’t put a price tag on the painting.

But
a similar work in de Kooning’s “Woman” series sold for $137.5 million a
decade ago. The university can't sell its de Kooning, though, because
of a stipulation by the donor, architect and businessman Edward
Gallagher Jr.

Once restored, the painting will be on display for generations to come.

“We all felt its loss, and we all wanted it recovered,” said Miller, the museum’s curator.

Saturday, July 01, 2017

Brighton
Antiques Knocker Boy Lee Collins appeared at Portsmouth Crown Court on
June 23rd 2017 where he was convicted on two counts. He received two
years six months for the first count and eighteen months for the second
count. A total of four years in prison.
Subsequently, Lee Collins aka Lee Kendall appeared at Aylesbury Crown Court and after a trial was convicted and sentenced on June 29th 2017 to a further eighteen months in prison. Not sure if this means he will serve the whole five years six months for the three convictions or the last sentence will be concurrent?

Update: JAILED: Man, Lee Collins, posing as tradesman stole from elderly couple's home in Great Missenden

A man who posed as a tradesman to steal from an elderly couple’s home in Great Missenden has been jailed for 18 months.
In July last year 50-year-old Lee Collins, of The Heights in
Brighton, visited the couple's home claiming to work for ‘Clarences of
Sussex’ – and asked to buy antiques.
While the victims were distracted, Collins, who is also known as Lee Kendall, stole an Omega watch from the house.
He was later stopped by police in High Wycombe and a number of items were seized from his vehicle.
Collins was charged on October 25 last year and appeared at Aylesbury Crown Court on Thursday, June 29 where he was sentenced.
Investigating officer PC Chris Jamieson, from Taplow Police
Station, said: "This case related to a burglary targeted at vulnerable
members of the community. I am pleased that Collins has been convicted
and will be serving time in prison.
"Thames Valley Police will strive to work to bring offenders
to justice in this way, especially for offences such as this which
cause a lot of concern and impact to the public.
"We will ensure justice is brought to those attempting to target vulnerable members of our communities."

Although the companies website, twitter
and fb pages are still active, a letter was served today, July 4th 2017,to strike this
company in two months and any assets or money will be paid to the crown.

Lee Collins relation pleads guilty to distrction buglary

Police release transcript made between pensioner and man who was later sentenced for distraction burglary

Jack Collins has been sentenced for carrying out a distraction burglary at an elderly woman’s home in Gerrards Cross

This is the transcript of a conversation between a pensioner and a man who was sentenced for a distraction burglary at her home.
Thames
Valley Police have released the CCTV recording of the elderly woman's
conversation with Jack Collins, 21, of The Heights, Brighton, made on
the doorstep of the 88-year-old's Gerrards Cross home.
Collins
purported to be a clock repair man and using the trading name
"Clarences of Sussex" paid a visit to the victim's address at 3pm on
July 6 2016.
He asked to be let in to examine a clock at
the property, stating that the victim had previously asked him to
attend for repairs, but the victim has no memory of this.

The victim and witness were happy for this transcript to be released:Jack Collins (JC) –
“Good afternoon, sorry to trouble you, it’s about the brochure I
dropped in last week, did you have a chance to read the brochure at
all?” Victim (V) – “What was it about?” (JC) –
“We’ve found out some good news about your clock for you, do you
remember? We came a while back, and I just needed to have another quick
look, that’s all.” (V) opens the door – “If it’s anywhere it’ll be… look… do you see it?” (JC) “Yes, it’s the wall clock, the grandmother” (V) – “The big one?” (JC) – “Yes! Do you remember we looked at it a while ago now?” (V) – “I don’t remember” (JC) – “Um, is it all right to have a quick look?” (after a 10 second gap in the CCTV) “…to get it repaired for you” (V) – “I don’t particularly want it repaired” (JC) –
“No, that’s fine. I’ll leave that. Um do you remember the beads that
you showed me upstairs? Because I found out about them for you and
they’re going to be worth several hundred pounds. Is it alright to have
another look? (V) – “Yes” (JC) – “Come on then” JC goes up the stairs and is out of sight. The victim attempts to follow, but is slow climbing the stairs on her own. Shortly
after Collins goes upstairs a neighbour of the victim arrives, asking
Collins who he is and for his business card. Collins agrees to go out to
his car and collect the card for the neighbour, however he does not
return to the property.
It is not believed that Collins actually took anything from the property.

He pleaded guilty at Amersham Crown Court on Wednesday May
17 and was sentenced to 21 months imprisonment (suspended for 2 years),
250 hours unpaid work and £500 compensation.
Investigating
officer PC Chris Jamieson, from Taplow Police Station, said: “I am
grateful for the hard work undertaken to convict the offender and
protect the vulnerable victim.
"I also particularly commend the brave neighbour who the challenged the offender during the burglary, causing him to flee.
“I hope this promotes a message that we will robustly investigate these
kinds of offences and ensure justice is brought to those attempting to
target vulnerable members of our communities.
“This is a particularly disturbing case of an offender targeting an elderly victim and taking advantage of her vulnerabilities.
"We
would also advise all elderly or vulnerable residents to be on their
guard when people call at their door, even if they are expecting someone
– care should still be taken.”
Advice for how to deal with callers is available here

The Cézanne Stolen In The Perfect Art Heist For a New Millennium

As
the world celebrated the dawn of a new millennium in 2000, a thief
broke into Oxford's Ashmolean Museum and stole a Cézanne painting. It,
and the thief, have never been found

As
the clock struck midnight on January 1, 2000, crowds around the world
went wild. It was not only a new year, worthy of all the celebration
that entails, but also a new millennium, one that many believed would
start in 'Y2K' disaster.
But
the crisis was averted, the clocks and computers rolled back to zero
with nary a hiccup, and the revelry began in full force in towns like
Oxford, England.
While many had been preparing for the
evening by stocking up on canned goods and bottled water (just in case),
one person in the U.K. had a different idea of preparation.
Sometime
after 1 a.m. on New Year’s Day, while fireworks were blasting and
revelers carousing in the surrounding streets—a thief successfully
carried out his plan to steal Paul Cézanne’s 'View of Auvers-sur-Oise' from the University of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum.The history of art theft
is littered with amateurs who have royally bungled their ill-considered
attempts at a get-rich-quick scheme (hint: stealing art is complicated
and rarely lucrative), and heists that are successful are often
attributed to woefully inadequate security.
But neither
of these plot lines applied to the Cézanne-napping. The thief who broke
into the Ashmolean on New Year’s Eve carried out a professional, highly
planned heist that many have likened to that of The Thomas Crown Affair. The plan
was meticulously executed. Using the construction scaffolding at nearby
Oxford University Library, the thief climbed onto the roof and then
hopped across several buildings to get to the museum.
The thief then broke through a skylight, lowered a rope into the gallery below, and shimmied their way down.
The
real evil genius of the plan was in their next move. As the thief
entered the gallery, they activated a smoke canister and, using a fan,
spread a fog that obscured the view of the security cameras—one of the
reasons the thief has never been identified—and set off the fire alarm.
While
most would consider tripping an alarm in the middle of a crime a
deal-breaker, in this case, it bought the thief an extra couple of
minutes. While security guards waited for the fire department to arrive,
the thief was able to grab the Cézanne from a nearby gallery, shimmy
back up the rope, reverse their roof hopping, and disappear into the
surrounding crowd.
The whole heist took less than ten
minutes and, by the time the authorities had cleared the building and
determined that the only emergency was the empty space where the Cézanne
had once hung, the thief was gone without a trace.
“'It
is the only Cézanne we have in the Ashmolean, and it is very important
as an example of late 19th-century painting,” Dr. Christopher Brown,
then-director of the Ashmolean, told the Guardian. “This is not just a criminal act but a very selfish act.”'View of Auvers-sur-Oise' was painted by the artist sometime between 1879 and 1882,
and it represents a key step in Cézanne’s career as he transitioned
from his early, darker work to the Post-Impressionist style that he
would become known for. Cézanne may now be considered one of the most important artists of the 19th century, paving the way for Modernism and gaining followers of the likes of Matisse, Picasso, and Kandinsky, but he was ignored and even rejected for most of his career (his first solo show wasn’t until the age of 56).
While he was struggling in his early 30’s to gain a toehold in the artistic community, the artist decided to move his family to Auvers-sur-Oise in France at the suggestion of his dear friend and fellow painter Camille Pissarro.
“Our Cézanne gives us hope, and I’ve seen some paintings; I have at home one of remarkable vigor and power,” Pissarro wrote in a letter
to Antoine Guillemet in early 1872. “If, as I hope, he remains for
awhile in Auvers, where he’s going to live, he’ll astonish a lot of
artists who were too quick to condemn him.”
He would
astonish artists, although their condemnation lasted for several more
decades, but the year and a half that Cézanne spent in the small town to
the northwest of Paris would continue to influence him for a long time.
“Cézanne mightn't have been Cézanne without [Pissarro],” Jerry Saltz wrote in a 2005 review
of an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art called “Cézanne and
Pissarro: Pioneering Modern Painting.” “It was Pissarro who pulled
Cézanne toward nature, away from expressionist painting, the palette
knife excesses of Courbet, and what art historian Roger Fry called
‘artistic madness.’”
Well after he left town in early 1874, Cézanne
would continue to paint landscapes inspired by Auvers-sur-Oise. One of
these was the painting that ended up in the Ashmolean collection.
As the smoke cleared in the early morning hours of the new Millennium, detectives
on the scene started looking at the case as a “stolen-to-order” job.
The Cézanne was in the very same gallery as a van Gogh, a Picasso, a
Manet, and a Monet, but none of the other paintings were touched; the
culprit clearly had a mission when they broke through the skylight.
But in an interview he gave to NPR
several days after the theft, Dr. Brown, the museum’s director, said
that he wasn’t sure that was the case. He told NPR's Liane Hansen that
earlier in December, a Cézanne had sold at an auction in London for £18
million. He thought the man responsible had learned about the sale and
saw an opportunity to cash in.
Beyond being a devastating
loss for the museum, the theft was particularly hurtful to Brown
because of the path it took to get to Oxford.
The
Cézanne was part of a group of paintings donated to the museum by
Richard and Sophie Walzer, who had come to the U.K. as German refugees
fleeing Hitler during World War II.
“In giving this
group of pictures to the Ashmolean, they were thanking the British
people for taking them in at this terrible time, and particularly the
people of Oxford,” Brown told NPR. “So there is a real sentimental link
between this picture and Oxford. And it is profoundly upsetting to me,
as it is to many of us here, that that link has been broken by this
criminal act.”
As the confetti settled from the New
Year’s celebrations and the world got back to their lives, word of the
theft began to hit papers around the globe. Worth a reported $4.8 million,
'View of Auvers-sur-Oise' was one of the most significant art heists in
recent decades, and that distinction earned it a not-so-prized spot on
the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Art Crimes list, where it remains today.
But
despite the publicity, no break has come in the case of the missing
Cézanne and the painting’s whereabouts remain just as hidden as the
identity of the person who took it in the first place.
But
wherever the perpetrator is—whether enjoying the spoils of their
made-for-hire job or sneaking glances at the famous painting that is not
so easy to sell—the joke may be on them.
In February 2016,
new guidelines were passed in the U.K. that demand a more severe
punishment for offenses deemed “heritage crimes,” a designation for
which the New Year’s Eve theft more than qualifies. Had the thief been
discovered before that date, they would have faced a less severe
sentence.
If the thief is ever caught they may find
themselves wishing that, on that momentous Millennium night, they too
had had no greater plans than to enjoy a raucous display of fireworks
just like everyone else.Art Hostage Comments:
Please listen to this radio show featuring Charlie Hill explaining how he was offered the Cezanne back for 20,000 euros, but the museum and police refused to engage with him.http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b065rlrt

Artful Dodger

Irish Monet vandal Andrew Shannon is back to his old tricks as he’s spotted on prowl at ANOTHER art gallery in England

Our pictures also show him and his older cohort mingling with other visitors as they appear to identify items for theft

IRELAND’S most notorious art thief and convicted masterpiece vandal is refusing to give up his place in Rogues’ Gallery.

Our exclusive CCTV stills show Andrew Shannon on the prowl inside
Kiplin Hall in North Yorkshire, England, with another man and a teenage
lad.

Shannon looks up at the camera
In the first snap, the 51-year-old is captured looking directly at a
security camera in the 16th century Jacobean house, near Northallerton.
Our pictures also show him and his older cohort mingling with other visitors as they appear to identify items for theft.
And in another, the trio are seen walking down the stairs after entering the historic property’s private bedrooms.
Although he was spotted acting suspiciously by the stately home’s
guides, staff were unable to prevent the theft of five antique books.
And cops were left frustrated in their attempts to charge the trio
with theft after they failed to recover any of the stolen tomes.

Shannon walks around the gallery
Shannon, who provided legal advice to lags while inside Dublin’s
Cloverhill Prison, swooped on the property in April 2016 after his early
release from a six-year sentence for damaging a €10million painting in
Dublin in 2012.
Our exclusive CCTV grabs show Shannon in the National Gallery of Ireland at the moment he lunged at the Monet masterpiece.
The thief — who has 48 previous convictions — is pictured mingling with visitors and admiring other works of art.
But onlookers were left stunned after he jumped at the artwork before punching a hole through the canvas.
The damaged painting — the Argenteuil Basin with a Single Sail Boat — is now back on display after it was repaired.
Passing sentence in December 2014, Mr Justice Martin Nolan said the
Monet attack was a “peculiar crime”, adding the way the damage had been
caused was “abnormal”.
He suspended the final 15 months of Shannon’s six-year term on condition he does not enter art ­galleries.

Shannon punches a hole in Monet painting as stunned onlookers stand watching in horror
Today’s special investigation by the Irish Sun into one of Europe’s
most prolific art and antique thieves reveals how he’s now back behind
bars.
He is serving a sentence at HM Prison Preston after he was lifted by cops there in April of this year.
He was wanted by detectives in the UK after he failed to return to
complete a theft sentence there after he previously received temporary
release.
The thief — who was again released from prison in October over a
one-year sentence for possessing 57 stolen antique books taken from
Carton House, Co Kildare — was arrested after his Ford Focus was
identified by the Automatic Numberplate Recognition System.
We understand UK cops swooped after they received a tip-off from the Gardai that he was travelling to England.
Shannon, who also failed in his appeal to have his conviction for the
Monet attack overturned after pleading his innocence, will now spend
the next 15 months in the UK slammer.
A source said: “It’s great news for the art world to have this man back behind bars again.
“Even when he received temporary release he came back to Ireland to target more stately homes.
“He will steal anything he gets his hands on and just doesn’t want
other people enjoying fine art or antiques. He even stole a wedding
photographer’s album in Co Monaghan even though it was worth nothing. He
just did it for badness.”

Collins Courts

The damaged Claude Monet painting
Although he’s now back behind bars, owners of vintage estates across
England, Scotland and Wales will be on high alert when he’s released
next year.
One owner of a UK pad told us: “Shannon has been one of our most
prolific offenders. He’s a suspect in stealing items from five homes in
the last year.
“He’s not even stealing anything substantial.
“On one of his visits he’s suspected of stealing an ashtray and little figures that don’t have any monetary value.
“The whole thing seems to be a dare to him and it looks as if he’s
taunting us because he’s looking directly at the camera in one of the
images.
“He seldom leaves empty-handed and doesn’t work alone. It looks as if he’s now passing on his experience to a younger criminal.
“The problems for us start when he comes over here and we know he’s been operating here for a very long time.”

It took 18 months to repair the damage Shannon caused to the painting
The investigation into Shannon’s exploits in Ireland was run by
Sergeant Eugene McCarthy and his team, including Detective Garda David
Ganly, under the command of Superintendent Joe Gannon.
Supt Gannon welcomed Shannon’s jail sentence in England and said:
“It’s good to see there is no safe refuge for people who engage in
criminality. This individual targets paintings and antiquities for some
ulterior motive known only to himself.
“Thankfully, the law has finally caught up and dealt with him.
“A very thorough and diligent investigation into this man was
conducted by the investigating officers. He poses a serious threat to
the world of art and antiquities.
“He attempted to deny the general public the pleasure of preserving and viewing the legacy of history.”
We can also reveal that during a search of his home last year,
officers also recovered thousands of toothbrushes and Star Wars toys.
Our latest revelations come after we revealed exclusive images from inside Shannon’s secret art gallery at his home.
A €100,000 haul — including 43 paintings and ten rare books — was found at the thief’s home after it was raided.

Shannon and two associates walk down stairs in gallery
We showed how every wall in the tiny two-bedroom duplex in Ongar, west Dublin,
was peppered with fine art. The pictures also illustrated how Shannon
dished out a fortune on revamping the pad. His decorations included
installing a TV inside the property’s bathroom.
Officers also found an antique chiropodist kit, three medals and a
Georgian door lock — with the most expensive item a €10,000 Wooded River
Landscape with Peasants by Irish-based artist William Ashford.
A source added: “Shannon’s property was like something from the
Titanic or Gone With The Wind — every wall was completely covered. On
the one hand you have him destroying historic works of art and on the
other admiring them privately at his home.
“Every room had a painting hanging and he was clearly very proud of his collection. It was like a professional art gallery.
“The house didn’t look like much on the outside but a lot of money went into it.
“Shannon was unemployed and yet he still had paintings in every corner of his house.”
Since the recovery of the items from Shannon’s pad, over €30,000
worth of artworks and antiques have been returned to their owners.
They include three paintings returned to the Culloden Hotel in
Northern Ireland, books to Maynooth University and a painting to the
Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin.
One of the items found belonged to Slane Castle owner Lord Henry Mountcharles.
Gardai believe the €4,000 item was swiped from Beau Parc House in
Navan, Co Meath, in 1986. But others who have yet to come forward and
collect their treasures.

West London dealer jailed for stolen watch sales worth over £1 million

A watch dealer from West London has been jailed for 18 months for selling hundreds of stolen luxury watches.
Nadeem Tayyab Malick, who is listed on Companies House as the only
director of Quality Marque Watches in the London suburb
of Northwood, was arrested on 21 March 2016 by officers from the Met’s
Flying Squad after he tried to sell a gold Rolex to a dealer in London’s
Hatton Garden jewellery district.
The Hatton Garden jeweller discovered that the watch had been listed
with the Art Loss Register as having been stolen in a robbery in Mayfair
of 6 January.
During that robbery, four men raided a watch shop in Mayfair where
they smashed display cabinets and stole 81 watches valued at £1.1
million.
The thieves fled the scene on motorcycles but were stopped by police at Portland Place.
While being pursued by officers, one of the men was seen to discard a
bag. When officers recovered the bag it was found to contain 41 watches
from the robbery valued at £650,000.
The man who discarded the bag of watches is currently serving a seven year prison sentence for the robbery.
Following the robbery, the store owner supplied the details of the
outstanding 40 stolen watches to the Art Loss Register which is a
private database of stolen or lost art, antiques and collectibles. The
Art Loss Register runs a database dedicated solely to lost and stolen
watches.
On 21 March 2016, the Art Loss Register carried out a watch search
for a Hatton Garden watch dealer who had been offered for sale a gold
Rolex watch by Mr Malick and discovered it had been stolen in the
robbery in Mayfair of 6 January.
Mr Malick was arrested the same day by officers from the Met’s Flying
Squad. When he was arrested he was in possession of a stolen vintage
Rolex GMT Master watch valued at £13,500 and a search discovered a bag
containing 27 other watches.
A further 60 watches were recovered during the search of his home
address making a total of 78 watches. Of the 78 seized watches, 50 were
found to have been stolen.
Of the 50 stolen watches 32 were stolen from a jewellers in Milton
Keynes on 21 November 2015. Fourteen were stolen from a jeweller in
Oxford on 31 December 2015, two had come from residential burglaries and
one had been purchased with a fraudulent credit card.
The total value of the stolen watches found to be in Mr Malick’s possession was £113,450.
Mr Malick claimed to be an occasional watch dealer who often
purchased timepieces for spare parts or repairs. Detectives made
enquiries into his business dealings and found overwhelming evidence to
the contrary.
Between September 2014 and May 2016, Mr Malick supplied 288 watches
to a pre-owned watch specialist with a combined value of £691,080. The
watch specialist provided police with a full list of the watches they
had purchased from Malick and 25 were found to have been stolen.
A second pre-owned watch specialist purchased 247 watches from Mr
Malick between September 2014 and June 2016. The total value of the
watches sold by Malick to this second dealer was £519,370. This dealer
also provided details of the purchases and 31 were found to have been
stolen during burglaries, robberies, thefts and snatches in London,
Thames Valley and Bedfordshire.
Between September 14 and June 2016, Mr Malick had watches sold
£1,210,450 in watches to the two specialist dealers. This includes
£179,075 in stolen watches. In addition, £113,450 in stolen watches were
recovered from Malick when he was arrested.
Despite the considerable cash flow, officers found that Mr Malick was
not declaring any earnings although he was actually earning beyond the
maximum turnover that can be traded before being subject to compulsory
registration as a company.
Detective Constable Kevin Parley of the Met’s Flying Squad said:
“Despite purporting to be a small-time player on the watch dealing
field, I compiled overwhelming evidence of handling stolen goods against
Malick.
“Each of the 106 stolen watches that he handled represents a victim
of crime and I am pleased that the sentence handed down today reflects
that.
“The assistance provided by the Art Loss Register continues to be of
great investigative value to police and contributes hugely to reuniting
stolen goods with their rightful owners.”

Fate Of Stolen Clock Still A Mystery, M.S. Rau Offers $25,000 Reward

A
$25,000 reward is being offered for the safe return of this
jewel-encrusted antique clock, valued at $425,000. Courtesy of M.S. Rau
Antiques.

CHICAGO – The rare Asprey & Co. mystery clock that was reported
stolen during the Chicago Antiques, Art and Design Show on May 21 has
not been found, and M.S. Rau Antiques is offering a $25,000 reward for
its safe return. Valued at $425,000, the clock was taken from the New
Orleans dealer’s booth on the final day of the weekend show.
According to a report published by the Chicago Tribune,
a man and two women approached the dealer’s booth at about 3:45 pm on
May 21 at the show. The man and one of the women distracted vendor
employees while the other woman allegedly took the antique clock
decorated with diamonds and mother of pearl, according to police.
The Twentieth Century clock, adorned with sapphires, 18K white gold
and crystal, is about 5Ã½ inches wide and 8 inches tall. A video
further describing the clock can be seen at https://youtu.be/JTaqCocaomw.
To receive the reward, the clock must be returned to the police in
pristine condition and in working order. Leads should be directed to
Detective Li or Detective Nickeas of the Chicago Police Department at
312-742-7456 and reference the M.S. Rau Antiques case. Any leads sent
directly to M.S. Rau Antiques will not be forwarded.

Thursday, June 22, 2017

Art Hostage Comments:
Arthur Brand, claims in the article on Bloomberg, below he is negociating with former IRA members to recover the Gardner art.
These leads are Irish drug dealers who work out of the Netherland.
Furthermore, Arthur Brand claims a Dutch criminal had photo's of the Gardner art back in the 1990's and was trying to sell them in Europe. This criminal was Michel Van Rijn and he sold them to Irish criminals, but sadly they were copies/fakes and Michel Van Rijn scammed the buyers, who could not get them authenticated for obvious reasons.
These fake Gardner artworks have been passed through many hands over the years and if they are ever recovered it will become clear very quickly they are good quality fakes. Therefore no reward would ever be paid out and the reason given will be because they are copies, true or false.
However, this is not to say some of the original Gardner artworks might be held by Irish people, but this latest attempt by Arthur Brand is chasing the fake Gardner art sold by Michel Van Rijn.

Cracking the Biggest Art Heist in History

For
nearly three decades, detectives have sought to solve the theft of $500
million of artwork from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.
They think the end is near.

By

Nina Siegal

20 June 2017, 05:00 GMT+1

It’s still regarded as the greatest unsolved art heist of all time: $500 million of art—including works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Degas, and Manet—plucked from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston on March 18, 1990, by two men posing as police.
The
museum had offered a $5 million reward for the return of all 13 pieces
in good condition. Last month, the bounty was suddenly and unexpectedly doubled to $10 million.
For such a long-unsolved case, the investigation is surprisingly active into the disappearance of the artworks, which include paintings, a Chinese vase and a 19th century finial of an eagle.
Anthony Amore, the museum’s director of security, says he works on the
case every day and is in “almost constant contact” with FBI
investigators. Tipsters still call all the time, with leads that range
from the vaguely interesting to the downright bizarre. Among them:
a psychic who offered to contact the late Mrs. Gardner’s spirit, and a
few self-styled sleuths who reckon the paintings can be found with metal
dowsing rods.
Most of those go nowhere. Whether the works will ever be
recovered, or if they still exist at all, is one of the great questions
that has divided the art world.
“Those paintings are gone,”
said Erin Thompson, professor of art crime at the John Jay College of
Criminal Justice in New York. “Either because they were destroyed
immediately after they were stolen, or because they’ve already been
beaten up so badly by being moved around in the back of cars.”
But
there is one outside detective respected by Amore—Arthur Brand, a Dutch
private investigator—who believes not only are the artworks still
intact, but also that he can bring them home. This year.
“It’s
almost certain that the pieces still exist,” Brand told me. “We are
following two leads that both go to the Netherlands, and we are now
negotiating with certain people.”
Brand, 47, has
become one of the world’s leading experts in international art crimes. A
British newspaper once called him the “Indiana Jones of the art world”
for his combination of crack negotiating skills and uncanny instincts
for finding stolen art.
In the past few years, Brand has posed as the agent of a Texas oil millionaire to help Berlin police find two enormous bronze horses from the German Reichstag. He worked with Ukrainian militia members to secure the return of five stolen Dutch masters to the Westfries Museum in the Netherlands. He negotiated with two criminal gangs for the successful return of a Salvador Dali and a painting by Tamara de Lempicka, together valued at about $25 million, to the now-closed Scheringa Museum of Realist Art, also in the Netherlands.
Brand
acts as something of a liaison between criminals and the police.
Controversially, he’ll try to make deals that allow the culprits to go
free, because he says his primary goal is saving the art from the trash
heap.
“There are very few like him who understand the reality of this sort of crime,” Amore said.

“It’s the Holy Grail in the art world”René
Allonge, the chief art investigator with the Berlin State Office of
Criminal Investigation, said his team had been searching for Hitler’s
bronze horses since 2013. He contacted Brand at the end of 2014, met him
in 2015, and they conducted the investigation and searches jointly, “as
far as it was legally possible.” Ultimately, Brand played a
crucial role in the discovery of the bronze horses, as well as other
populist bronzes from the Nazi era, he said. “He succeeded in
penetrating a very closed scene of collectors of high-quality Nazi
devotionalia, where we finally found the sculptures that we were
searching for,” Allonge wrote in an email.
Brand’s
reward in some of these high-profile cases is often the glory and
nothing more. Scheringa had originally offered a €250,000
bounty ($280,000) for the Dali and Lempicka, but the museum had shut
down by the time they were recovered. Brand was paid an hourly fee and had his expenses reimbursed, though he declined to say by whom. For finding Hitler’s horses, he got no cash at all, just a lot of free publicity, he says.
“He’s
not the guy to charge you for every hour he works,” said Ad Geerdink,
director of the Westfries Museum, for which Brand recovered five
old-master paintings from a militia group in Ukraine. “He knew that we
are a small organization with not many resources, so the fee was very,
very friendly.”
The biggest bonus Brand’s ever
received for solving a case was about €25,000, he says. He adds
that he’s investigating the Gardner case for the glory. “It’s the Holy
Grail in the art world,” he said.

It’s estimated that only 5 percent to 10
percent of stolen art is ever recovered, largely because the works
are impossible to sell publicly.

“People will steal
art first and then think about what to do with it second,” said
Thompson, the art crime professor. “Often they’ll destroy the work of
art to get rid of the evidence.”
Shortly after seven
paintings by Picasso, Monet, Van Gogh, Gauguin, and others, valued in
the tens of millions of dollars, were stolen from Rotterdam’s
Kunsthal museum in 2013, they were burned by the mother of one of three
Romanian thieves arrested and charged in the burglary. She confessed to
investigators that she was scared after police began searching her
village.
Alternatively, paintings are used as bargaining chips in
criminal cases. That’s how Italian police recently located two stolen
Van Goghs.
In 2002, thieves broke into the Van Gogh
Museum in Amsterdam with a sledgehammer—just because they saw a weakness
in the museum’s security, not because they knew what they were after.
The opportunists sold the works for ‎€350,000 to alleged Italian mobster
Raffaele Imperiale. (The art was said to be worth tens of
millions—although it never came to market, so it’s impossible to know.)
In a seaside town near Naples, Imperiale stored the canvases in his mother’s kitchen cabinet
for a dozen years until prosecutors closed in. In August, Imperiale
disclosed their location in an attempt to improve his standing with the
courts, his lawyers, Maurizio Frizzi and Giovanni Ricco, told me.
Prosecutors subsequently reduced his sentence by about two years, they
said.

But often, the thieves are only persuaded to let go of works if
they think they’re going to sell them on the black market. This is where
someone like Brand can come in. In 2014, he created a character
to help solve the case of the missing Reichstag bronze horses. He
pretended to be an agent for “Dr. Moss,” a fictional American collector
who had gotten rich in the oil business, loosely based on the character
J.R. Ewing from the TV show Dallas. He has also posed as the
representative of princes and sheikhs, or even as a criminal himself.
“Whatever works, works,” he said. He draws the line at wearing costumes.
Brand says he almost never deals with the original
thieves. Stolen art tends to move through many hands. Sometimes, the
ultimate recipient doesn’t know that what they have was stolen.
“In
many cases, I have to deal with a person who has a problem: They’ve
been screwed by another criminal group,” Brand said. “They can either
pass art along to another criminal group, or they can burn it. That’s
even worse. What they won’t do is take the work to the police and say,
‘We found these Van Goghs.’ Because the police will ask where they got
them.”

“We’re not talking about murders here. If a big criminal has them or the Pope, it doesn’t matter”That’s
where Brand has an opportunity to become the middleman. He can promise
the sellers they won’t get in trouble, then get assurances that the
police won’t make arrests.
Brand’s style works
particularly well for snaring amateur crooks, said Noah Charney, founder
of the Association for Research Into Crimes Against Art. A lot of
people who steal art assume there are collectors out there who buy on
the black market, like characters in heist movies. In fact, almost none
exist, he said.
“People have always collected art to
show their erudition and to advertise their wealth,” he said. “If you
buy something that you know or suspect was stolen, you can’t show it to
anyone.”
Criminals don’t always know that. “They get
desperate and then turn to someone like Arthur Brand,” someone they are
willing to believe is the real deal, Charney said.

Six-foot-two,
with a shock of blond hair and bright blue eyes, Brand could be played
in the movie of his life by Liam Neeson or Ralph Fiennes. His sleuthing
is an adjunct to his primary and less dramatic job—helping buyers who
have been swindled, conned, or overcharged for art.

“About
70 percent of what I do is just in the office, visiting clients,
visiting dealers, talking to people, and saying, ‘Give him his money
back!’” he said. “The other 30 percent is walking around talking to
criminals, talking to police, informants, and going undercover
sometimes.”
Brand first became connected to the art world as a student,
through collecting ancient Roman and Greek coins. “I found out that
there were a lot of fakes out there, and I didn’t want to spend my
hard-earned money buying fakes,” he said.
In 2002,
Brand received the first of many tips, rumors, and leads about the
Gardner case. He heard that back in 1991, people in Holland had
photographs of the paintings in storage. By following up, he became
convinced that the paintings were never sent to the Netherlands, but
photographs were being circulated by people trying to sell the paintings
to someone there.
Sometime around 2010, he heard
that the works had ended up in the hands of former members of the Irish
Republican Army. But he soon suffered a setback with the death of one of
his top sources, a former IRA member.
Brand believes
the original thieves were small-time burglars who sold the pieces to a
criminal gang in the U.S. before they were killed in the early 1990s. At
some point in the mid-1990s, he thinks, the works were shipped to
Ireland by boat and ended up with top-ranking IRA commanders.
For
the past 12 years, Amore and the FBI have worked around a theory that
local gang members in the Boston area may have been involved. They are
fairly certain that the two thieves who committed the crime died shortly
afterwards, Amore said.
But Amore believes the works
are still in the U.S. “Art that is stolen in America tends to stay in
America,” he said. “I’d be happy to be proven wrong.”
The statute of limitations on the theft ran out in 1995, and
the Office of the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts has considered
offering immunity for information that leads to its return. The museum
mostly cares about getting the works back, Amore said. That’s partly why
they raised the reward.
“It was important for the museum to show its commitment,” he said. “We’re telling the public this is how serious we are.”
Brand
says the higher reward may help speed things up. He isn’t convinced,
though, that the criminals involved will trust the FBI to live up to the
deal, despite his assurances.
“For me, it’s not
about getting people arrested,” he said. “We’re not talking about
murders here. If a big criminal has them or the Pope, it doesn’t matter.
The important thing is to get them back.”

Brand says this case could be cracked within months. He won’t elaborate, but if his leads are good, he’ll have to work fast.
Amore
also says that he and the FBI may be close to solving the case, and
they have leads that are “making the haystack smaller.” He, too,
declined to share specifics. “We feel we’re on the right path,” he said.
The FBI is more measured. “The investigation has
had many twists and turns, promising leads and dead ends,” said Kristen
Setera, an agency spokeswoman in Boston. “It has included thousands of
interviews and incalculable hours of effort. The FBI believes with high
confidence that we have identified those responsible for the theft, even
though we still don’t know where the art is currently located.”
Brand is confident he can find out.
“Somebody
I’m talking to knows something,” he said. “These people are not idiots.
They know that they can’t just hand them over and walk away with
impunity. They think even if they’ve been offered immunity, the police
will have some tricks up their sleeves. What I can do is I can provide
them a way to return the works without ever having contact with the
police. I can even promise them that they can get the reward.”
Would Brand really hand over $10 million?
“If I can be the one who can bring them to the museum,” he says, “give me a good glass of Guinness, and that’s reward enough.”—With assistance from Hugo Miller.

The trail had been cold for years when the FBI announced in
2010 that it had sent crime scene evidence from the Isabella Stewart
Gardner Museum to its lab for retesting, hoping advances in DNA analysis
would identify the thieves who stole $500 million worth of
masterpieces.
But behind the scenes, federal investigators
searching for a break in the world’s largest art theft were stymied by
another mystery. The duct tape and handcuffs that the thieves had used
to restrain the museum’s two security guards — evidence that might, even
27 years after the crime, retain traces of DNA — had disappeared.
The FBI, which collected the crime scene evidence after the heist,
lost the duct tape and handcuffs, according to three people familiar
with the investigation. Despite an exhaustive internal search, the FBI
has been unable to find the missing evidence, thwarting its plan to
analyze it for potential traces of the thieves’ genetic material,
according to those people, who asked not to be identified because they
are not authorized to speak publicly about the case.
It’s unclear
when the items vanished — although two people said they have been
missing for more than a decade — and whether they were thrown away or
simply misfiled, the people said.

The lost evidence marks another setback in an ongoing investigation
that has been plagued by the deaths of suspects, defiant mobsters,
fruitless searches, and a litany of dashed hopes. None of the 13 stolen
treasures, which include masterpieces by Vermeer and Rembrandt, have
been recovered, and no one has been charged.
The FBI declined to comment on the missing evidence, citing the
ongoing investigation, but defended its handling of the case. Harold H.
Shaw, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston office, said the
bureau has devoted significant resources to the investigation, chased
leads around the world, and remains committed to recovering the artwork.
“The
investigation has had many twists and turns, promising leads and dead
ends,” Shaw said. “It has included thousands of interviews and
incalculable hours of effort.”
The FBI completed DNA analysis of some museum evidence in 2010,
according to Kristen Setera, an FBI spokeswoman. She declined to say
what items were tested or what, if anything, the tests showed.
The
heist remains one of Boston’s greatest mysteries. Promising leads have
led nowhere, leaving investigators at a crossroads. Most notably, a
seven-year effort to pressure a Connecticut mobster for information has
come up empty.
Robert Gentile, 80, faces sentencing in August on
gun charges but could walk free if he cooperated with federal
authorities, his lawyer said. Despite the enticement, and a hefty
reward, Gentile denies knowing anything about the stolen artwork.
Finding
the treasures may require a new approach, according to several former
law enforcement officials who worked on the case. They suggested that
investigators should restart the investigation from scratch and review
the evidence in a contemporary light.
Carmen Ortiz, who recently stepped down as US attorney for
Massachusetts, said authorities should shift their strategy, perhaps to
include appeals on social media, and expand the investigative team.
“Get
around the table with some fresh eyes, in addition to those who know
this case very well, to give it a new look,” Ortiz said. Ortiz’s
successor, Acting US Attorney William Weinreb, said the investigation
remains a top priority.
A former assistant US attorney, Robert
Fisher, who oversaw the Gardner investigation from 2010 to 2016, said
investigators should “go back to square one” and study the crime as if
it just happened, analyzing each piece of evidence with the latest DNA,
fingerprint, and video technology.
“What if it happened last
night, what would we do this morning to try to crack this case?” said
Fisher, an attorney at Nixon Peabody.
Told that the Globe had
learned the duct tape and handcuffs left behind by the thieves were now
missing, Fisher said he hoped they would be found.
“Frankly, it
could be enormously helpful,” Fisher said of the missing items. “I think
present-day forensic analysis of evidence like that could lead to a
break in the case.”
However, he said the tape may yield no viable DNA, depending on its condition.
Anthony
Amore, the museum’s security director, said investigators are pursuing a
number of new leads following last month’s announcement that the reward
for information leading to the recovery of the artwork had doubled to
$10 million until year’s end. Dozens of tips were received, he said.
“I
operate in the realm of hope,” said Amore, who has worked with the FBI
and US attorney’s office on the investigation for nearly 12 years. “We
are never going to stop looking for these paintings.”
The brazen heist — the largest property crime in US history — occurred in the early morning hours of March 18, 1990. Two
thieves disguised as police officers claimed to be investigating a
disturbance when they showed up at the museum’s side door on Palace Road
in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood. They were buzzed inside by a
23-year-old security guard, who, by his own admission, has never been
eliminated as a suspect.
The thieves wrapped duct tape around the
hands, eyes, and mouths of the two guards on duty, then left them
handcuffed in the museum’s basement as they spent 81 minutes slashing
and pulling masterpieces from their frames.
In the days after the
robbery, FBI and Boston police crime scene analysts scoured the museum
for clues. They lifted partial fingerprints from the empty frames but
found no matches in the FBI database.
At the time, DNA evidence was in its infancy. But scientific advances
have since opened new doors for investigators, cracking unsolved cases
across the country.
DNA experts said it’s possible the thieves’ DNA couldbe
pulled from the duct tape, although the chances are slim. Success
hinges on a number of variables, such as how the evidence was preserved
and how many people handled it while freeing the guards and storing it.
“Certainly
people have retrieved DNA from samples that old, but how much you can
get is the big question,” said Robin Cotton, director of the Biomedical
Forensic Sciences Program at the Boston University School of Medicine.
Analysts
would also need DNA samples from the police officers who removed the
tape to distinguish their DNA from the thieves, Cotton said.
Tom
Evans, scientific director of the DNA Enzymes Division at New England
Biolabs, an Ipswich firm that conducts DNA testing, said technology has
come so far that it may take only a single cell to identify someone
through DNA analysis. But DNA breaks down over time, especially in hot
or humid conditions.
“Twenty-seven years later, it might work and it might fail,” Evans said.
The
statute of limitations on the theft expired years ago, but authorities
could still bring criminal charges for hiding or transporting the stolen
artwork. The US attorney’s office has offered immunity in exchange for
the return of the paintings.
Four years ago, the FBI announced it
was confident it had identified the thieves — local criminals who have
since died — and had determined that the stolen artwork traveled through
organized crime circles from Boston to Connecticut to Philadelphia,
where the trail went cold around 2003.
In 2010, the FBI began
focusing on Gentile after the widow of another person of interest in the
theft, Robert Guarente, told agents that her late husband had given two
of the stolen paintings to Gentile before he died in 2004.
Federal
authorities allege that Gentile offered to sell some of the stolen
paintings to an undercover FBI agent in 2015 for $500,000 apiece. They
remain convinced that he is holding back what he knows.
However,
Gentile’s lawyer, A. Ryan McGuigan, said his client insists he has
nothing to offer investigators and recently told him, “They could make
the reward $100 million and it wouldn’t change anything because there
ain’t no paintings.”
Another person who has come under renewed
scrutiny in recent years is Richard Abath, the guard who opened the door
for the thieves. A Berklee College of Music dropout who played in a
rock ’n’ roll band while working at the museum, he has steadfastly
maintained that he played no role in the heist.
Authorities have
said that motion sensors that recorded the thieves’ steps as they moved
through the museum indicate they never entered the first-floor gallery
where Manet’s “Chez Tortoni” was stolen. Only Abath’s steps, as he made
his rounds before the thieves arrived, were picked up there, they have
said.
Steve Keller, a security consultant hired by the museum,
said he tested the motion sensors after the theft and determined they
were reliable. He said he entered and left the room several times where
the Manet had been stolen, even crawling on his hands and knees in an
effort to avoid detection. Each time the sensors detected his presence.
Abath declined to comment.
Former
US attorney Brian T. Kelly, who previously oversaw efforts to recover
the Gardner artwork, said he remains hopeful the masterpieces will be
recovered.
“All it takes is a new lead that leads in a new direction and a lucky break or two,” Kelly said.Shelley Murphy can be reached at shelley.murphy@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @shelleymurph. Stephen Kurkjian can be reached at stephenkurkjian@gmail.comArt Hostage Comments:
So many false leads, controlled oposition etc.
The FBI insist any Gardner art recovery is done on their terms and includes arrests/indictments etc.
The Gardner Museum has also been bullied into towing the line therefore
any reward includes conditions that allows refusal of reward payment,
for example the insistance on all the art work being recovered in "Good
condition" before any reward would be paid out.

The museum’s trustees also felt they were being kept in the dark about
the status of the investigation. Trustee Francis W. Hatch, Jr. recalled
one meeting held ostensibly to gain a briefing from the agent and
supervisor on the case. “They wouldn’t tell us anything about what they
thought of the robbery
or who they considered suspects,” Hatch recalls. “It was
very embarrassing to all of us.”

"Hatch
convinced the trustees that the museum needed to hire a fi rm to
investigate, and stay in touch with the FBI on its probe. IGI, a private
investigative firm based in Washington begun by Terry Lenzner, who had
cut his teeth as a lawyer for the Senate Watergate Committee, was put on
retainer, and the executive assigned to the case was Larry Potts, a
former top
deputy in the FBI. Fearful that their authority was being undercut, the FBI’s
supervisors
in Boston complained to US attorney Wayne Budd, who fired off a memo
warning the museum that it faced prosecution if it withheld information
relevant to the investigation. Hatch responded, saying in his letter
that he
was “shocked and saddened” by Budd’s attempt to “intimidate”
the museum and that it cast “a pall over future cooperative efforts.”
From Master Thieves by Stephen Kurkjian

Wow! It's almost as if one of the thieves was untouchable,
like because he was the star witness testifying in a German court in absentia
against the ringleader of the longest running spy ring in American history,
Clyde Lee Conrad, and was also implicating himself and two other spies he
himself had recruited, at that time, like Boston area native Rod Ramsay, or
somebody like that.

"In
addition, more than thirty paintings, valued at $200 million, that
Imelda Marcos had allegedly purloined from the Metropolitan Museum of
Manila, including works by Rubens, El Greco, Picasso, and Degas, were
being stored by Khashoggi for the Marcoses, but it turned out that the
pictures had been sold to Khashoggi as part of a cover-up. The art
treasures were first hidden on his yacht and then moved to his penthouse
in Cannes. The penthouse was raided by the French police in a search
for the pictures in April 1987, but it is believed that Khashoggi had
been tipped off. He turned over nine of the paintings to the police,
claiming to have sold the others to a Panamanian company, but
investigators believe that he sold the pictures back to himself. The
rest of the loot is thought to be in Athens. If he is found guilty, such
charges could get him up to ten years in an American slammer."

Some of the Gardner art may have reached the Middle East, making it much harder to recover.
Some of the Gardner art may be in terrible condition preventing any
recovery because any reward would be negated by this, see Gardner
museums conditions of recovery in "Good condition"

The Gardner case has been a political tug of war, with all sides refusing to give an inch.Food for thought:
If they believe the thieves are deceased why did they only just recently
stipulate that the thieves are not eligible for the reward?

From this article: "Plagued by the deaths of suspects,
defiant mobsters."

Beat that local toughs theory into the ground Boston Globe. Last month the FBI
said the know who the guy in the video is, but they're not saying if he was
there for a legitimate reason or not. So obviously he wsa there for an
illegitimate reason. And he most certainly is not a local tough so the whole
local tough or any kind of mafia type theory is thoroughly discredited.

Abath has no known associations with local toughs and this guy talking to ABath
is not a local tough or any kind of mafia type. Kurkjian reported in November
of 2015 that four security guards said it was retired Lt. Colonel and Gardner
Security supervisor Larry O'Brian, which is ridiculous, but it points to the fact
that by his haircut, clothing, and comportment, this was a guy who could be
mistaken for a security supervisor. Could Donati, or DiMuzio, or Reissfelder,
be mistaken for a security supervisor by security guards on a surveillance
video? I don't think so.

There has never been a scintilla of evidence supporting that theory. The whole
theory was just a full employment for program FBI agents and their friends in
journalism. And the dead suspects were just convenient props who would not be
able to stand up for themselves, be publicly vetted or file a lawsuit.

Notice that Mashberg doesn't say they look like the police sketches. Nor does
Kelly get quoted saying that. How absurd? It's like trying to translate the
Soviet house organ Pravda into Russian.

In the Globe's article about the Powerpoint 3/17/15, a couple of weeks later,
Shelley Murphy, evidently couldn't bring herself to mention Leonard DiMuzio by
name. Can you blame her? DiMuzio, the victim of an unsolved homicide, was an
honorably discharged Marine Corp corporal, and a Viet Nam vet. He does NOT
resemble the police sketch. The New York Times described him as a
"skillful burglar" which probably means they had not caught him yet.

Reissfelder, a bad check writer, who liked to talk like a tough guy spent 16
years in prison for a robbery/murder he did not commit and was exonerated.
After he got out in 1982, he slept with the lights on.

But get ready for the real "CATCH" from this article by Murphy about
Reissfelder

"The catch: Reissfelder was 50 at the time of the heist, and the guards
estimated one thief was in his late 20s to early 30s and the other was in his
30s. However, Kelly said he doesn’t believe the age estimates were
reliable."

So Kelly says he thinks that two guys in their twenties one a 27 year old with
a Master's Degree from the New England Conservatory can't differentiate between
someone in their 30's and a 51 year old drug addict who had spent half of his
adult life in Walpole State Prison.

And Robert Gentile is the only "defiant" mobster. He says he didn't
do it. Stephen Kurkjian says he wasn't involved. Kurkjian's name is on this
article. How is Gentile's defiance any kind of "plague?"

The I.T. Revolution did not end yesterday morning and it is not ending tomorrow
morning. Get real. The paintings may or may not come back but the truth about
who did it is coming out. It was not local toughs.

The Boston FBI conducted the "investigation" the
way they were told from higher up, in Washington from the beginning. It's time
for Washington to leave Boston alone on this now.

“The place is so wonderful now that we tend to forget what a horrendous thing
it was to have happened,” [back then Governor Michael] Dukakis recalled
recently. “The wearing of police uniforms always bothered me, and then the
SEEMING difficulty of being able to identify them.”

Hawley too, he said, has shared with him and his wife, Kitty, a very close
friend, her frustration that the FBI has been unable to recover any of the
stolen pieces. “She’s frustrated, HIGHLY SKEPTICAL about a lot of the stuff,”
he said. “She’s gotten tired with everything. Enough already.” from Master
Thieves by Stepehn Kurkjian

Dear Washington: Enough already!!!

This was not made public until 2013:

"We also were threatened by criminals who WANTED attention from the FBI
Nobody knew really what kind of a cauldron we were in." Anne Hawley
12/4/13https://youtu.be/WwnQs1BvvlU?t=44

What kind of criminals WANT attention from the FBI?

I don't know what kind of cauldron we're in, but from the smell of it, I think
I know what it is we're sharing it with.

Who cares? I mean it is bad, but they already know who did
it. This seems like a diversionary, gaslighting, in-emergency-break-glass,
non-story designed to regain control of the narrative by pumping up pointless
data with media steroids and pumping it out into the information stream on
this.

CNN was somehow compelled or persuaded to re-write an article about the Gardner
Heist reward being doubled to ten million written by Charney. They didn't
acknowledge any errors, but they did put in this disclaimer:

You can see Charney on American Greed Season Two Episode Nine "Unsolved:
$300 Million Art Heist / Preying On Faith" on Hulu matter of factly
contradicting the FBI's Geoff Kelly who appears on the same episode to discuss
the Gardner Heist https://www.hulu.com/watch/46551#i0,p5,d0

Then on Friday Emily Rooney smeared Charney at the end of the show, describing
this established art theft expert incompletely as an art novelist, and one who
is indifferent to facts, and whose original story had "ten egregious
errors." But Rooney has not said what any of the errors were and CNN is
not doing a correction. So all we have for egregious errors in the public
domain is Rooney's description of Noah Charney's professional background,
character and ability to render facts on paper for a news story. https://youtu.be/jmfXv-MT8nM?t=344

And the Gardner Heist story is one place where this rivalry is playing itself
out. It is a prelude to what appears to be just how things are going to be for
a while and getting rid of Trump is not going to solve it.

Charney's story (the current version) suggests that raising the reward is an
act of desperation. One thing we know is that the suggestion of a Boston Globe
editorial from the time of 25th anniversary is unlikely to be considered no
matter how hopeless things get in this 27 year old saga:

Himself a former trafficker of stolen art, Turbo Paul Hendry M.A. provides information to the readers of his blogs (including collectors, victims, insurers, and other members of the public) regarding the latest news from the world of stolen art and artifacts and, wherever possible, he assists in the recovery of art and artifacts stolen by others. Art Hostage, for the last Ten years, has provided services to private individuals, insurers, law enforcement agencies, and to those who have information that will lead to the recovery of stolen art.